Tag Archives: Rumi

Karen‘s post included quote from two of my favourite poets: Hafiz and Rumi. Love is the essential idea behind the quotes.

The second Hafiz quote says fear is the cheapest room in the house. As we lift each other up with our love, we expand the rooms in the house we can each live in. Loving each other is a gift and a serving of each other. It can make people and the world whole again.

I felt a touch of sadness the last few days of school. I think it goes back to my first year teaching. The students told me they wanted school to continue into the summer. My last year teaching students sent me off with the message it was not the content that was meaningful, but the life lessons they learned.

Etymologically, anarchy comes from repeatedly new beginnings. Thought of that way, each new beginning is an opportunity to dance.

Rumi said “We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless,
directed by the one who teaches us, the pure joy of the sun, our music master.” New beginnings are a dance that we do not always hear the music to.

We each walk our own path. Others can walk beside us, hold our hand, and be there. What they cannot do is live our lives.

I thought about traveling today, as I prepare for my trip tomorrow. It brought several quotes to mind about the paths we travel and what that means.

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Walk beside me and be my friend.” Camus

“It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” Rumi

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” Thoreau

The reflecting led me to look through some notes and this poem emerged.

Walk it so may be glorious.

Your courage is your truth

Let it shine a light on the path.

Discover beauty in what you give

Let it be the path you seek.

Walk at your pace

Be present in the world.

Walk with your story

Follow the questions of your quest.

Find a space to catch a glimpse of yourself

It is a space to dance, sing, and live.

Be vulnerable in that space

It is makes you who you are.

This is a path at Sunwapta Falls in Jasper National Park. We walked down to the see the falls and Kathy took the picture as I walked back up. The roots and people walking wove a pattern and story into the path.

Rumi used paradoxical language in his poetry. Whenever I read his poetry, I find myself searching for the meaning of those words.

In this poem, I think he is suggesting that, when a person feels wanted and loved, there is a sense of belonging. A person can surrender to love, when they are cared for, belonging in a relationship.

The reciprocity of love makes one whole, healing them. The title proposes that love is quiet and a person has to listen closely, still themselves and their thoughts to hear the call addressing them. In this sense, love is a mindful and attentive way of living.

Rumi‘s words remind me, as a teacher, that my teaching is more than just providing information for students to learn in a rote way for recall on a test. If what children and adults learn does not have meaning to them, it becomes “yellow or stagnates.”

On the last day I taught, my students gave me a card and gift, but it was the words they offered that meant the most. They told me it was not learning from an official curriculum, but the “other things” that would mean the most to them in later years.

Curriculum comes from the Latin currere and means “running a course” and relates to living one’s life. In running the course and living one’s life, the other tablet comes to life. It is who and what that are close to our hearts that mean the most. As we live life, we discover what that means in sometimes surprising ways.

It is what we reflect upon and are mindful of, reflecting who we are, that brings the greatest joy to our running and recounting the course of our lives.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

Rumi had a wonderful way with words that touched the soul. Semra Polat shared two quotes in this post. When I read them, I easily understand as speaking about another person who means the world to me. As well, Rumi might have spoken about God, as a divine entity I experience by looking into the majesty of what God created.

In each moment, I witness what was created. I come to imagine the universe not yet born as I look into God’s eyes. In those moment, I am mindful and attentive to who and what I encounter and experience.

At one time when life was real, your soul was one with my soul:
All we were, open or secret, was part of the same whole.
If “you” and “I” are pronouns I use, they are only terms–
In truth, there can be no separate you or I at all.

I came across this Rumi quote at Leonard‘s blog. We do not live separate from one another, but are part of an inseparable collective. Understood this way, language only acts as labels we affix to one another to enable communication.

When we understand we are each part of that larger collective and are attentive to the needs of others, community emerges in unexpected ways. We seek to help one another, living together in worthwhile and healthy ways.